February 2019

 

RHAPpy Valentine’s Day

February is here, which means it’s almost Valentine’s Day! This year, honor your loved ones by giving the gift of reproductive health care access. In addition to flowers and chocolates, show your Valentine that you care about access by supporting RHAP in their name. We’ll let them know you donated in their honor by sending them a beautiful e-card with your personalized message! Share the love and help us train and support clinicians to make reproductive health care accessible to everyone.

Will you help RHAP spread the love and give the gift of access this Valentine’s Day? Every dollar counts! Whether it is $10, $15, or $25, you’re making a difference and showing your love and care for people everywhere who deserve compassionate, high-quality abortion, contraception, and miscarriage care. Send one or more Valentine’s Day e-cards honoring your loved ones, family members, and friends!

 

Remove the Restrictions: Mife Now!

Don’t forget to join us in taking action to expand access to mifepristone! Did you know that mifepristone – most commonly known as the “abortion pill” – is also very effective for medication management of early pregnancy loss (miscarriage)? According to a recent study, mifepristone raises the effectiveness of medication management of miscarriage from 67% to 84% in the first 48 hours after taking it. Unfortunately, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) makes using mifepristone for miscarriage nearly impossible. We want to change this.

Currently, mifepristone is subject to the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS), which means it’s classified as a “dangerous drug” – even though it has a history of safe and effective use. The REMS prevent clinicians from prescribing mifepristone for abortion and requires both clinicians and patients to sign agreements stating that they are using mifepristone for abortion, even if they’re taking it for a different purpose. This dissuades clinics from stocking mifepristone and denies patients access to the best possible treatment. If you’d like to learn more, check out NPR’s great piece explaining this issue.

We believe that mifepristone should be available at pharmacies and for miscarriage treatment, because it is safe, effective, and patient-centered. Here’s how you can expand access to mifepristone:

1. Send a letter to the FDA urging them to remove the REMS classification of mifepristone.
2. Sign a petition to Danco Labs, the company that produces mifepristone, asking them to take the necessary steps to make mifepristone available by prescription.
3. Spread the word. Share the petition and letter with your friends, families, and colleagues.

 

Help Us Thank Abortion Providers

At RHAP, we are lucky to work with clinicians who provide abortion care all across the United States. Abortion providers face unique challenges unlike those of any other medical providers, including stigma, aggressive legislative restrictions, and even threats to their safety. We are thankful every day for the abortion providers who, despite these challenges, are dedicated to providing their patients with the health care that they need and deserve. The more we recognize the invaluable folks that provide this safe and legal medical care, the more we work towards reducing stigma around abortion care. 

On March 10, 1993, Dr. David Gunn was murdered by an anti-abortion extremist. To commemorate his life, the work he did, and the work that all abortion providers do to ensure that people can control their reproductive destinies, March 10^th is recognized as National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers.

In honor of this upcoming Appreciation Day, please take a minute to share your reasons for thanking abortion providers – send us your messages and we’ll write them on postcards to mail to providers across the country and share them on social media to encourage others to give thanks. If you’d like to host a mailing party of your own, email Kallie McLoughlin, our Operations Associate, for help getting started.
 

Help Us Fund a Papaya Workshop

It’s a common assumption that early-term abortions are scary, medically complicated, and require an extensive procedure. These assumptions foster stigma around abortion care, despite the fact that early term abortion is simple, effective, and minimally invasive – and can be offered in a primary care setting. RHAP is working hard to de-stigmatize abortion through education and hands-on activities for clinicians and non-clinicians. By using papayas, an anatomical model for a uterus, we provide workshops to model and role-play patient-centered options counseling, discuss early abortion options such as a medication abortion and procedure abortion, and demonstrate a manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) procedure. These workshops are led by a trained clinical facilitator, and we cover the cost of papayas, arrange facilitator(s), MVA toolkits, printing patient education materials, and shipping (our workshops are available all over the country!).

In 2019, our goal is to do continue expanding our papaya workshops program. We want to provide 30 workshops to over 500 clinicians and non-clinicians.

Here’s how you can support this initiative:

• $120/year or $10/month will provide supplies and equipment to host 1 papaya workshop. Each workshop reaches about 15 learners.
• $396/year or $33/month will help us organize enough papaya workshops to train 60 people.

Make a one-time gift or become a recurring donor and help us de-stigmatize abortion through the power of information and papayas!

If you’re interested in learning more about the workshop or in hosting your own, click here.
 

Spotlight on a Donor: Catherine Romanos

Catherine is an amazing RHAP supporter and donor, and one of the Network leaders for our Ohio Cluster. She first became involved with the RHAP Network when she was a resident. Through the Network, she was able to get more contraception training, which led her to seek out more abortion training to become an abortion provider. We are so proud of her as she was able to use resources from the RHAP Network to provide full-time abortion care in Ohio, and she continues to work with us to pass on these skills to others. Through her experiences with the Network, she has also become a RHAP donor.

“After the 2016 election, I had a lot of support, and when colleagues were ready to get more involved in providing abortion care, RHAP was there to harness that energy. Through RHAP’s communications, I hear about things I never thought about, such as new research. One of the things I love about our Ohio Cluster is we can have conversations that are state-specific, such as laws at the state level.” – Catherine Romanos

Thank you, Catherine, for being a committed Network leader, abortion provider, and RHAP supporter! We are so grateful for your leadership and commitment to providing high-quality, patient-centered abortion care, to patients in Ohio and across the country.